Just read this in the Reno Gazette-Journal: If folks want some of those glasses, they’ll need to head down to Trader Dick’s and order a Tahitian dreamsicle, a mahalo or a lethal zombie. Despite rumors bobbing about (on a sea of rum and pineapple juice), the Nugget is not auctioning off its tiki-ware. Instead, the property is retaining much of it for future tiki events; the remainder is being sold in bulk to a restaurant industry dealer. Trader Dick’s is closing Febuary 8, after Saturday’s dinner service.

Pity the poor Mason jar of today. Pity, too, the short pour glasses, assorted tumblers, sleek columns and other glassware now populating restaurant tables. Those vessels have nothing on the tiki mugs — grimacing gods, swaying palm trees, amply bosomed hula girls and other Polynesian kitsch — that once brimmed with potent tropical drinks at tiki restaurants across the country.

Trader Dick’s in John Ascuaga’s Nugget is one such restaurant, a tiki lollapalooza featuring a thatched bar, Polynesian-inspired carvings, dark woods, a flurry of fronds, tropical flowers, thickets of bamboo shooting for the ceiling and, garnishing the dining room in silent fury, tiki carved to resemble the Hawaiian god of war. The waitresses never wore sarongs, though they might have.

But the kitsch is coming to a close. After being in business nearly 60 years, an incredible run in the restaurant trade, Trader Dick’s is closing after Saturday’s dinner service to make way for Gilley’s Saloon, Dance Hall & BBQ, a country-western spot. Last night, friends of the house gathered at Trader Dick’s to say farewell to blue lagoons, scorpion bowls for four and puu puu platters.

“It’s unusual the restaurant lasted so long,” said Carlton Geer, the Nugget’s new president and CEO after the property’s sale last December. “Trader Dick’s was a great concept for decades, but there’s an evolution with food and drink products, and it was time to move on to the next concept, Gilley’s. For the demographic we’re trying to appeal to, country-western is perfect.”

Customer memories
Trader Dick’s originally opened across the street from the current Nugget in 1958. The restaurant took inspiration from Don the Beachcomber, which opened in Hollywood in the 1930s, and the Trader Vic’s chain that began in Oakland.

By the 1950s, tiki culture — a kitschy decorative and dining take on Polynesian art and food — had become hugely popular in the United States, fueled by military personnel returning home from the Pacific Theater after World War II, James Michener’s “Tales of the South Pacific,” movies like “South Pacific” and easier air travel to Hawaii. Trader Dick’s harnessed this popularity for Northern Nevada
The restaurant hula-ed inside the Nugget in 1973; in 1988, it moved to its current location, a spot with fond (and frequently bibulous) associations for many folks at the farewell party.

“I’ve been coming here for the last 25 years,” said Dian VanderWell of Reno. “After I turned 21, all four of us came here and got the scorpion” — rums and tropical juices in a giant communal glass bowl — “and drank it with all the straws sticking out. Another time, we had a Christmas party here for my husband’s company, and we scorpioned it up.”

Despite her fond memories, VanderWell said she hadn’t been to Trader Dick’s in several years, an admission made by several guests at the party, and something that likely contributed to what Geer, the Nugget president and CEO, described as Trader Dick’s “trending downward” customer numbers in recent years.

Debbie McCarthy of Reno said she’d been coming to the restaurant almost as long as VanderWell, but unlike her fellow partygoer, McCarthy said she was still a regular. “I love the music and the dancing. I’ve danced so many hours here. I also love that you can take the tiki glasses home.”

New home
If folks want some of those glasses, they’ll need to head down to Trader Dick’s and order a Tahitian dreamsicle, a mahalo or a lethal zombie (there’s 25 percent off check totals through Saturday). Despite rumors bobbing about (on a sea of rum and pineapple juice), the Nugget is not auctioning off its tiki-ware. Instead, the property is retaining much of it for future tiki events; the remainder is being sold in bulk to a restaurant industry dealer.

The fish in Trader Dick’s 30-foot fish tank — the colorful angelfish, the darting humuhumus — are moving on Sunday to their new home at Scheels, where they’ll be quarantined a bit before swimming into the general piscine population.

Last night, people without reservations began arriving at Trader Dick’s well before 5 p.m. Could they be accommodated? Not until well past 8 p.m., alas. The tables were already booked, many, no doubt, by folks who also wanted to bid farewell to kitsch.